


rest for the wicked

by vanitaslaughing



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Brotherly Love, Episode Ardyn Spoilers, Gen, and how it falls apart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 11:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18777781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: four times somnus slept through his birthday one way or anotherand one time he was kept up





	rest for the wicked

**Author's Note:**

> i got so restless i couldnt focus on finishing this on time but (sticks legout)
> 
> happy birthday somnus, my character development is that im absolutely in love with you

Someone pulled the curtains open. Light flooded into the room, and so very rudely interrupted the comfortable darkness that had been all around him until now. Thanks to the curtains being open the birdsong from outside became louder. Too loud.

He only pulled his blanket over his head.

“Somnus.”

A grumble.

“Somnus.”

Another grumble.

“Somnus!”

He didn’t give an answer this time. Something heavy landed on the bed next to him, and unfortunate as it was—his brother pulled the blanket off his head with a laugh. He groaned loudly and cracked one eye open a little.

Ardyn had the blanket in his hands, a wide smile on his face, with the morning sun turning his already bright hair as bright red as the poppy growing outside on the hills. “Get up, sleepyhead!” Normally Somnus enjoyed looking into those hazel eyes that were softer and more comforting than their parents’ at most times. Normally. Not today, however.

He turned around and put his back to his brother. “Can’t make me.”

“Who sleeps through their entire birthday?” They had had a picnic for Ardyn’s eighth birthday. They had departed awfully early, with Somnus basically clinging to his brother’s tunic and he barely remembered a thing since he fell asleep the moment they had finally sat down. Their father had since returned to travelling with the hunters—there was a rumour going about that a village by the sea had been found completely devoid of any human life. Though his father was no king, he still went to ensure the people’s safety.

Unfortunately it also meant that today, on his birthday, their father was gone and their mother still bound to bed. She had gotten awfully sick two days after the picnic.

“Me. I do. Nothing to do.”

Ardyn, who had reached over to ruffle his younger brother’s hair, stopped doing that. He was frowning, clearly trying to think of something to say. Being older only got him so far; and Somnus was turning five and was absolutely determined to stay in bed this time around.

“Well, alright. If that’s what you wanna do….”

Ardyn disappeared for a few minutes—Somnus closed the curtains once more and, with a grumble, sunk back into bed. The blanket was gone. Well, whatever. He could sleep without it.

When Ardyn returned, he had dozed off again. His brother made some sort of displeased sound at the curtains and opened them just a little. Then he sat down on the bed once more and poked Somnus in the shoulder.

“Spending the day all on your own and fast asleep’s gotta be boring, Som. So, I’ll just… read that book we started the other day out loud and you can sleep?”

He grumbled softly, then sat up once again. Before Ardyn could say anything else, Somnus had thrown himself against his older brother’s side with yet another grumble.

“Fine by me.”

Ardyn put the blanket around their shoulders. “Happy birthday, Somnus.”

* * *

Someone pulled the curtains open.

Somnus let out a groan and tried to move away from the warm morning sun, but as he moved a sharp sting of agonising pain went through his entire left arm. He let out a yelp of pain, and nearly immediately he felt someone nearly crash into the bed beside him. That someone grabbed him by the shoulders and rolled him back onto his back.

“Lady Aera!”

A huff came from the window, and Somnus cracked an eye open.

Honestly, all he could think about through the scathing pain was… how thirsty he was. He turned his head slightly to see who had turned him, considering that Aera had to be the one who had opened the curtains. His head barely registered a thing through the dull haze of pain, which the man frowning at him clearly saw.

Once he recognised Gilgamesh’s face, it all came back to him.

He blinked blearily and looked over at his arm—surely enough, it was tightly wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. Just yesterday the mission had taken them out further than expected. Night had long fallen before the creatures arrived; several against Somnus and Gilgamesh. One of them had appeared from behind, long claws poised to strike the Blademaster’s back while he was striking four of them down at once. Somnus had moved in and tried to parry the blow, but if those claws could have killed the Blademaster then a mid-growth spurt teenager like Somnus was barely anything more than a fly to be swatted away. He had barely realised what had gone on as he was pushed aside, claws snapping his wrist and cutting through his lower arm—

Once again he blinked blearily.

“I’m… alive?”

“Thanks to the falcon arriving just in the nick of time and Ardyn leading an entire battalion out to recover you and the Blademaster, yes,” Aera said as she sat down on the bed. Only now he realised that she was carrying bandages around. “What a lousy way to spend a birthday. How are you feeling?”

He breathed in. Exhaled slowly. “Tired,” he said quietly, noting that Aera narrowed her eyes. He was always tired, she seemed to be about to say but he cut her off. “Thirsty. Mostly tired.”

“Most would be in your situation,” the Blademaster said before looking at the blonde girl. “Has the wound opened over night?”

She had been messing with the bandages for a while. “Yeah, but none of the blood’s too fresh. Ardyn said as long as he wasn’t profusely bleeding it was going to be fine.” Right. Aera spent a lot of time in the library with his brother, and he likely read to her despite the fact she wasn’t a little kid anymore. Where was Ardyn, anyway? “Lord Gilgamesh, could you go fetch a glass of water for him?”

“Of course, milady.” The Blademaster ruffled a hand through Somnus’ hair before leaving. “That was brave, but also very stupid. Happy birthday, young prince.”

Somnus only closed his eyes again. By the gods, he was tired. Aera brushed a hand against his cheek.

“Happy birthday, idiot. Glad you’re still with us, sixteen years and kicking now.”

“At least I get to sleep this time….”

She snorted. “You’re a hopeless sleepyhead.”

* * *

Their latest argument still haunted him. Somnus had curled up on the windowsill, his legs hugged to himself as if he were twelve again instead of about to turn 24. He had no recollection of when he had passed out staring at the thin clouds barely covering the bright moon and stars outside—but now he felt a light tap on his shoulder and blearily opened one eye to look at how intruded his room. It took him a long moment to realise that he wasn’t in his bed, wasn’t even in his room.

Ardyn was frowning at him. Somnus closed his eyes again.

“If you expect me to apologise, leave.” He had spoken out of line, yes, but Ardyn was a fool. There was so much more that bothered Somnus about this pilgrimage to travel and heal the people while also scowling at Somnus’ proposal to simply round up the Daemons and offer them to flames in order to protect those who lived, but that was not something he was going to bring out right now.

Ardyn opened his mouth—27 and somehow he had not gotten more eloquent. Or perhaps Somnus simply had become much better with his words. Whatever he was about to say died in his throat, and Somnus’ scowl deepened at that.

He could count the times he’d seen Ardyn smile lately on one hand. Where they had once been inseparable a cleft had opened up between them; a rift that would be impossible to bridge unless both of them budged.

But Somnus wasn’t going to. Ardyn was proposing a fool’s crusade—he didn’t say that much, mind, but Somnus still did not like it the slightest. Just because he could heal the people didn’t have to mean that he healed everyone.

With a heavy sigh he jumped off the windowsill.

“Well. Given that it _is_ my birthday, I would quite like continue sleeping if you do not mind, brother.”

Ardyn wordlessly stepped out of his way. Somnus closed his eyes and pushed past his older brother, out of the room.

“Happy birthday,” was a whisper he definitely missed.

* * *

“Father!”

“I’m just… going to close my eyes….”

“No!”

Part of him wanted to say that it was his birthday and he could do whatever he wanted—but a king on his deathbed did not do childish things like that. He fought with the dim darkness that slowly rolled into his vision and entire being, and took the ring off with a shaky hand.

It seemed the Bladekeeper wouldn’t let him live to see his son turn 18. Gilgamesh had vanished long ago. Aera and his wife lay buried, and Ardyn remained chained up. There were so many things he regretted, but they had all been necessary. He handed the ring over to his son. “Push onwards. Accept the consequences. Never look back.”

Maybe he could rest now. Sleep. Sleep sounded so enticing.

* * *

Normally he really only roused for one occasion—death. The ring he had claimed after pushing Ardyn down the path that the Bladekeeper wanted him to go down had turned out to be a most curious item. One that sucked the life out of other living beings. One that sucked the life out of him. And ever since, his spirit had been stuck somewhere neither here nor there, within the ring that would become known as the Ring of the Lucii a few generations after him. Many kings and queens used it, but the Founder King only ever woke for when yet another of his descendants would join their ranks.

Otherwise, Somnus slept. Or rather hibernated. There was no escaping this place, there was no passing on; their numbers increased steadily, and so many of these men and women were hideously young. He had not been very old by any means when he had passed.

Yet there was a familiar tug on his entire being when something ripped him out of hibernation. Something that felt otherworldly, and but a moment later he felt something intensely seething and dark just nearby.

It was blood of his blood screaming for help without the child actually calling for help out loud—and his brother, awash with rancour and a most murderous desire.

He registered the girl who ruled from the shadow a moment later, her hand still stretched out in an attempt to wake him. He blinked at her a few times, then stood up.

“The Protector’s boy—he’s losing. Adagium keeps… calling for the Founder King. Perhaps it would be wise for you to intercept this before the boy gets hurt.”

Right. She and the boy who loved his people fiercely and destroyed all who would endanger them resided in the guardians that protected the New Wall, just as they resided within the Old Wall. He realised that the only reason why they had not acted without him yet was because Ardyn kept calling for him.

The Ring of the Lucii was cold. Desolate. Empty. Dark. Whatever the others did he neither knew nor cared about, but for a split second it felt as if something shattered.

“Come out, Somnus! The longer you wait, the longer he’ll have to suffer!”

The girl looked at him with fear in her eyes. “The burden of the ring—it is still fresh on his body, his soul. He will not last through a long assault.”

“I know that,” Somnus said and dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

Spending that long in an empty place, he had realised many things. The Bladekeeper certainly had played them all for fools and led them directly to where they needed to be. His fool of a brother who had once held the people above all and would have never resorted to petty revenge on the children of people long gone had been twisted by his own powers and another influence. That rage Ardyn displayed now was not something that he had ever witnessed in his brother. Granted—he could admit that much now—it was mostly his fault. Somnus was responsible for a lot of things, but Ardyn would have doomed them all to violent sweeping sickness with his supposed altruism. Aera would have died horribly regardless of what he did or did not do; after all her death would have fuelled Adagium’s descent. Rather than a blade to the back perhaps a long and agonising death as none of Ardyn’s treatment methods worked. Perhaps an accident as simple as slipping off the stairs leading up to the Crystal and breaking every bone in her body as she fell.

For the first time in centuries, Somnus Lucis Caelum I rose to his feet and fought off the intense urge to continue his hibernation. The Chosen One would be arriving as the current boy’s child before long now that they knew Adagium was awake and filled to the brim with rancour.

The Ring of the Lucii demanded him to answer the call just as Ardyn asked for him. He just hoped he wouldn’t be too late to save this boy; for all his faults and stubbornness and willingness to sell out people for the greater good, Regis Lucis Caelum CXIII was a good man. Better than many of the souls here, but definitely better than his bloodline’s progenitor.

Ardyn met him with a devilish grin splitting the once kind face. The king face that Somnus remembered grinning at him as he dozed leaning against him. The face that always humoured his little bouts, that seemed to admire his stubbornness when it came to playing chess fairly rather than giving himself an unfair advantage. This hardly seemed like the man who brushed his hair out of his face when fever left him shaking in his bed a few hours into his sixteenth birthday, the same man who still tried to see his beloved little brother when all Somnus offered him was contempt and snarls.

He barely took note of the destroyed decorations around him as he engaged his brother, if only to give the boy Regis enough time to recover. He was dangerously weak. But the decorations… could only mean one thing. He had no idea which generation started doing it, but at some point one of the children died fairly young and arrived on a day they called the Founder King’s Festival. They seemed bothered by death, but then were almost offended when Somnus had voiced confusion at the festival—that had been back with the old calendar. He had no idea what the day was, or the month, but as luck would have it, Ardyn chose his brother’s birthday to launch his attack.

Somnus very desperately wanted to go back to sleep. So he started saying what was on his mind. What weighed his heart down.

Ardyn only lashed out.

Understandable. Still, he could not allow his brother to proceed.

He couldn’t keep his eyes open even as he lost. A tiredness that he had not known before gripped him, and with a jolt of horror he realised that even though he was long since gone with no body left behind for the sickness to take a hold of, something festered for a second. Just a split second. He knew in the deepest recesses of his long still heart that he and the other two who engaged Ardyn on this day were left vulnerable to the Scourge with this. His brother was not powerful enough to quite yet act upon this, but one day he would be. One day he would march into Insomnia, the city that never belonged to Somnus, and would poison their minds with what poisoned his.

Still, as he closed his eyes and shook his head, he had to agree with his brother on one account.

This was disgusting. He was disgusting.

Somnus only wanted to sleep. He so very, very desperately wanted to get away from all of this. All of this agony he wrought because he had believed he was right, all at the behest of destiny and fate and the Bladekeeper’s hollow words. If Ardyn were a better man, he would fight back. But even so, Somnus saw that all he longed for was destruction and revenge. Deep down, Ardyn still believed the gods to be infallible. He would bow. There was no way he would not bow.

“I pray your soul find repose,” he said rather than say anything else to Ardyn, tiredness holding him fast in his grip as he considered his next words. He should have called his brother by his name. The name he called out so many times as he ran after him on his short legs. A name that he knew better now than his own. But Somnus did not in the end. Ardyn was dead—only Adagium remained. And though a creature of his own making, he would rather remember Ardyn as an idiot trying to decide who lived instead of a butcher driven mad by the planet’s scourge. “Brother.”

He returned to the Ring of the Lucii, where at least fifteen immediately gathered around him and shook his shoulders. They all cried different things, words that turned into a nonsense cacophony in his ringing ears.

Somnus dropped to his knees with a scream when the first sword bore itself into the ground. Pain had blossomed across his entire body; the fight catching up to an entity that should not feel pain because it was long since dead.

He knew—he would not sleep again until the very moment the unfortunate child born Chosen ordered them to pierce what had been severed from his brother when he reached for the Crystal. He could not. Not after having stared into the abyss that were his brother’s furious eyes.

The Lucii needed to be ready. Perhaps one day Somnus would be able to sleep again. But not for now.


End file.
